When I am made a congressman—
Woman's Rights and Suffrage,'" etc.
[60] Coming from The Dalles, the boat tied up for the night at Umatilla Landing. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Duniway walking on shore saw a man sitting in front of a little corner grocery and stopped to ask some questions. They found that when a boy he had run away from home in Miss Anthony's own neighborhood, had never written back and his family had long believed him dead. After some conversation he consented that she might write to his mother and then in his softened mood insisted that they should have a glass of wine. Miss Anthony was a total abstainer but not wishing to offend him, took one sip from a glass of Angelica and then the ladies hurried back to the boat. Some one who had seen the occurrence spread the story and the result was an Associated Press item sent broadcast, stating that, since coming to the coast, Miss Anthony was visiting saloons and associating with low characters.
[61] Two examples will suffice:
"EDITOR COLONIST: I have read with a feeling of thankfulness the letter of 'A Male Biped,' in this day's Colonist. The writer deserves the thanks of every good woman in the land for the bold and able manner in which he has administered a shaking to a shrewish old mischief-maker who, having failed to secure a husband herself, is tramping the continent to make her more fortunate sisters miserable by creating dissensions in their households. O, why do not some of our divines or lawyers upset this woman's sophistries, and convince even her that woman's true sphere is in 'submitting herself to her husband,' and religiously fulfilling the marriage vows the wise organizers of society have prescribed?
A WIFE AND A MOTHER."
"MR. EDITOR: America, the home of many humbugs, which produced Brigham Young, Barnum, Home, the medium, and many others, has, it appears, another human curiosity in Miss Anthony. This specimen from over the way comes amongst us, and because our ladies fail to recognize or encourage her in her vagaries, she gets very rabid and snarls and snaps at the 'women of Victoria who had so sunk their womanhood that they were happy even in their degradation.' The degradation referred to is that of whipping, which this female firebrand appears to believe is the rule hers. Surely the complete immunity from castigation of such a noxious creature as Miss Anthony is sufficient answer to this libel. Men in British Columbia no more countenance bad husbands than do the women a quack apostle in petticoats. They look upon such persons as sexual mistakes, like the two-headed lady or the four-legged baby, and as safe guides on social questions as George Francis Train is in politics.
AN INSULTED HUSBAND."
And yet during the few days she was in Victoria no leas than half a dozen women came to her to protest against the law which allowed the husband to whip his wife.
[62] During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate, a California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman suffrage, and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge. He took no notice of it until a week or two later, when a suffrage convention met in San Francisco; he then went before that body and delivered a radical speech in favor of woman's rights, taking the most advanced grounds. When he was through he remarked to a friend, "They have my views now, and can make the most of them. I would not conceal them to be senator."—History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 483.